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FATED OR FREE? 



A Dialogue on Destiny 



BY 



PRESTON WILLIAM SLOSSON 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 

1914 



B3 \<\<z\ 



Copyright, 1914 
Sherman, French & Company 



//*, 



NOV 30 1914 

©CI.A387744 



TO 

MY FATHER AND MOTHER 



FOREWORD 

In recording this little dialogue there has 
been no thought of proving any thesis or 
even of discussing a great question with the 
fulness it deserves. The aim has simply 
been to present as forcibly as possible the 
various objections which have been brought 
against the doctrine of free will from sev- 
eral different points of view and to see what 
answers a defender of the doctrine could 
offer. Originality for most of the argu- 
ments on either side cannot be claimed in a 
question which has been discussed so often, 
but I think that fairness in stating both sides 
of the question may be. The working out of 
this little discussion has been a source of 
great pleasure to the writer and it is the 
whole of his hope that it may prove of some 
interest to the reader; if not in itself, at least 
as a starting point for the reader's own 
thoughts on the subject. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The First Question 1 

The Second Question 5 

The Third Question 8 

The Fourth Question 16 

The Fifth Question 22 

The Sixth Question 28 

The Seventh Question 32 

The Eighth Question 40 

The Ninth Question 46 

The Tenth Question 54 

The Eleventh Question 58 

The Twelfth Question 62 

The Thirteenth Question 78 

The Fourteenth Question 82 



DRAMATIS PERSON AE 

Mr. James B. Freeman, the indeterminist. 

Dr. Clifford Owen Denker, professor of 
logic. 

Prof. Huxley Kohlenstoff, professor of 
physics. 

Prof. Ward M. Manteller, professor of so- 
ciology. 

Dr. Edwards C. Gottlieb, a Presbyterian min- 
ister. 

Mr. P. Meredith Riter, a novelist. 

Mr. Javert Lawes, warden of the state peni- 
tentiary. 

Mr. Dewey Smith, a practical man. 



THE FIRST QUESTION 

Can there be cause and effect if the will is free? 

Kohlenstoff. Found ! A man who believes 
in chance and in the twentieth century at that ! 
My dear Freeman, as a member of the edu- 
cated class you should have left all that behind 
you several centuries ago. 

Fref^man. Didn't you tell me only yester- 
day (granting yesterday for the sake of argu- 
ment) that time had no real existence? In 
that case what difference would the mere dat- 
ing of our arguments make? 

Denker. This difference, that the progress 
of science has made it harder and harder to 
get up a serious argument about free will. 
Twenty years from now you will wonder at 
having ever questioned the laws of the world 
in which you live and with which your scien- 
tific training should have made you familiar. 
Perhaps you will say that free will leaves us 
with most of the cosmos intact. You cling to a 
little strip of chaos as a drowning man clutches 
at a straw, but without his excuse. This will 
not serve you! A semi-cosmos is just as absurd 



2 FATED OR FREE? 

a contention as universal chaos ; once you ad- 
mit the very idea of law, it obtrudes itself 
everywhere. Our whole mental life is bound 
up with ideas of cause, origin and the " reason 
why " of things. Whatever is must have its 
reason for being or else how should it be? 
Suppose we say that the cause of any event 
was an act of will. Very good, but what, then, 
is the will? Did the will create itself? Let 
us grant this for the moment. Whence came 
the causing will, the previous self? Grant 
that this again is the product of free will and 
of nothing else. In the end we simply pursue 
our inquiry back to birth. Thus all free will 
turns out in the end to be nothing but our 
original endowment, heredity in short. Possi- 
bly you believe in pre-existence and would pur- 
sue the inquiry still further. But, quite aside 
from the absurdity of the idea of pre-existence, 
you have gained nothing by the move. The 
chain of causation still continues to hold. No 
wonder ; it is an endless chain. We cannot so 
much as think " event " without at the same 
time thinking " cause." 

Let us look at the other horn of the di- 
lemma a moment. If the will does not cause 
the will, what does? The environment? Then 
you give up free will at once. God? That 
would be sheer miracle. Suppose, then, that 
the will has no cause. Then your will may be 



FATED OR FREE? 3 

free, it is true, but it is no longer a will since 
the agent is completely divorced from his own 
act. Who would want a will that he couldn't 
control and might go off like an " unloaded 
gun" any minute? By taking that road you 
lose the very moral responsibility for which 
you were aiming and gain nothing, since this 
mysterious force which came unannounced into 
the mind like a thief at night must itself have 
a reason for being. All roads lead to one goal, 
the impossibility of chance. Chance does not 
have to be disproved; the mere statement of 
the question disposes of it forever. 

Freeman. And yet even the Calvinistic 
theologian admits the existence of a " first 
cause," and free will is nothing more than a 
case of that. 

Gottlieb. Surely, you cannot intend to ar- 
gue from the freedom of God to that of man. 
In making God first cause we deny the exist- 
ence of any other first cause whatever. Man's 
will is but a channel of the divine will and has 
no existence of itself apart from its great 
Source. 

Freeman. I was not arguing from God to 
man. I merely wish to point out that it is not 
candid to call an idea " inconceivable " when 
it is a fundamental thought in the minds of 
millions of persons including some of the 
staunchest determinists. 



4 FATED OR FREE? 

Denker. Oh, yes, the theologians may all 
dream of " first cause," but that doesn't sat- 
isfy me. Here is your dilemma; I state it 
again, — either we cause our own actions and 
so they are not free, since we ourselves are the 
result of the interplay of heredity and environ- 
ment, or else our wills are influenced by some 
unknowable factor outside the self entirely, in 
which case our acts are no longer ours at all. 
Until you have dehorned this dilemma, I for- 
bid you to proceed. 

Freeman. The only way to do that is to 
look at the act of will itself and see if it is 
really so incredible that our acts may be part 
of our very selves and yet be free. In the 
meanwhile I wish to say that I am bearing the 
burden of proof only for courtesy's sake, since 
he who wishes to prove a whole cosmos de- 
termined in every part from all time to all time 
has a much bigger task than he who would merely 
maintain the possibility that something " new " 
might possibly occur while allowing any 
amount of practical power to the determined 
forces of nature. 



THE SECOND QUESTION 

Can freedom be responsible? 

Kohlenstoff. As I see it you enter the dis- 
cussion with the best half of your case already 
surrendered. You will have some trouble in 
establishing a psychology with room in it for 
both freedom and responsibility, even if you 
follow the usual freewillist course and make it 
up to suit yourself. 

Freeman. I agree that the will is not free 
if it is entirely determined by the nature of 
the willing self. Free will, if it has any mean- 
ing, must refer to the starting of a new series 
of causes and effects, — an act of creation, in 
short. How about responsibility for our own 
acts in that case? To answer this question 
we must look a little closer at that double-faced 
word " chance." If you mean by the word 
that a free act cannot be entirely accounted 
for by the knowledge of previous causes, I 
agree. But to most people " chance " means 
something else, the breaking into the will of 
some outside force beyond our control. The 
freeness of the will means nothing of the sort. 



6 FATED OR FREE? 

It is the action of the previous self but not 
the result of its nature. In most cases a sin- 
gle strong motive will over-ride all obstacles 
and appear at once as action. But a complex 
of motives may check and counteract each 
other. This mutual checkmate brings about a 
sort of vortex of mental indecision. This is a 
moment of the intensest consciousness we 
know, what we call " making a decision." At 
this moment the will is driven in on itself and 
then, if ever, choice may really occur. If this 
is a true analysis of an act of will, then it may 
be free, since in the balance of motives only the 
spontaneous attitude of the will itself can de- 
termine the event ; it is also responsible, since 
no outside factor interferes to impel the will 
to its decision. Now, whether this self-choice 
can ever occur is another question. But if it 
can, you must yourselves admit that freedom, 
in the sense of absolute novelty and real al- 
ternative possibility, and responsibility, in the 
sense of the autonomy of the individual will, 
not only do not conflict but imply each other, 
since the creative will and the independent self 
are identical. Upon no other theory can we 
have real moral responsibility. On the de- 
terminist theory, as Denker has already made 
so clear, the willing self is determined from 
everlasting to everlasting and is but an instru- 
ment in the hands of nature, a channel of eter- 



FATED OR FREE? 7 

nal cosmic energies. To speak of responsi- 
bility in such a universe is to glove the iron 
hand of fate in conciliatory phrases. Besides 
even if some brand of " soft determinism " 
could conserve responsibility, the question of 
fact would still remain and freedom would still 
be the happier alternative. The real gain of 
the indeterminist theory is the idea of true 
alterability, of immeasurable because undeter- 
mined possibility. The keen joy of living in 
a universe of an indefinite number of ways of 
possible growth and change is, to say the least, 
as great as the sterner joy of ethical self-gov- 
ernment. I admit that the truth of free will 
is an open question, but about its desirability 
there is no question at all. Of course, if the 
universe is determined, we must face the fact 
and make the best of it. We are men, not 
ostriches. 



THE THIRD QUESTION 

Would the truth of free will affect natural 
science? 

Kohlenstoff. Freeman has been kind 
enough to define " free will " for us, and now 
all that remains is to disprove it. This is less 
hard to do since he has had some scientific 
training. If free will were true, science would 
be impossible, since the success of an experi- 
ment would be no warrant for its success upon 
repetition. We find chance nowhere in our 
dealings with nature. Neither with dead or 
living matter, in the field of the telescope or 
in that of the microscope, has anyone yet 
found an exception to the causal law. Chance 
is driven to lurk in the realm of psychology 
because it has been driven out of every other 
branch of natural science successively. Its 
skulking and crouching within the precincts of 
a new and complex science where it is the hard- 
est definitely to disprove will not save it long 
from utter extinction since almost all trained 
psychologists reject this dogma. If nothing 
else, the law of the conservation of energy 



FATED OR FREE? 9 

would settle the question. Every act involves 
energy. A " free " act would mean that this 
energy came from nowhere and did not pre- 
viously exist in any form, since, if it did, the 
existing energy would be the efficient cause of 
the act. But perhaps, since you make bold to 
deny the law of causality, you will have no 
scruples as regards the law of the conservation 
of energy. We may get you to deny the law 
of gravitation yet, should it be luckless enough 
to be in the way of your argument. 

Freeman. It is true that the indeterminist 
defines causality a little differently. Denker 
would have the law read : " Everything has 
a cause which completely accounts for its na- 
ture." I should rather put the matter as: 
" Everything has a cause, but under certain 
conditions a complex of causes might produce 
more than one possible effect." If to redefine 
a law is to deny it, then denying its laws is a 
large part of the business of every science. 
But the law of causality is the only natural law 
I can think of which free will need change in 
the slightest. It may be true, of course, that 
the law of the conservation of energy has ex- 
ceptions or is wrongly phrased. But no free- 
willist is forced to hold this position. We do 
not know that the will (or indeed any conscious 
state) is what we call " energy " at all. Even 
if it is, why should an extra amount of energy 



10 FATED OR FREE? 

be required to make an act of will indetermi- 
nate ? 

Kohkenstoff. But what use would freedom 
be if it were confined to consciousness? To 
accomplish anything an act of will must have 
physical effects. And how may a physical oc- 
currence take place without the expenditure of 
energy? Do you mean to hold the position 
that matter uninfluenced by mind is itself 
capable of free and responsible action? 

Freeman. I grant you that it would not 
be probable. But cannot the mental act of 
willing release energy without itself using any? 
A sort of catalytic action of consciousness 
might determine the action of the energies of 
the brain which produce action without the 
change of consciousness itself meaning any loss 
or gain of energy. Or, again, consciousness 
may itself involve a kind of energy capable of 
self-transformation without any other gain or 
loss than the usual degradation of energy in 
all action, free or not. These are two of the 
ways in which the law of the conservation of 
energy may be reconciled with free will. 

Denker. Reconciling free will with it, you 
mean; the laws of nature will not make way 
for you or any of your theories. 

Kohkenstoff. You said, Freeman, that 
causality is the only law of nature which the 
indeterminist is compelled to deny, — or re- 



FATED OR FREE? 11 

formulate, if you insist. We contend that to 
be logical you must reformulate (or in plain 
English smash) all laws whatever. Upon 
causality rests the whole structure of science, 
for if science cannot predict it can do nothing. 
Now just why are we to look for miracles in 
consciousness, when all our science exists just 
because they can't be found anywhere else? 
And why, if chance exists in consciousness, 
shouldn't it be found elsewhere as well? Do 
you confine miracles to the field of conscious- 
ness to save them from the attack of exact 
science, or from fear that if they got loose in 
the physical universe, they might ravage the 
entire cosmic order? I don't know which mo- 
tive is the stronger with you, but I am certain 
that the arbitrary line you draw between the 
fields in which miracles can happen and those 
in which they can't is traced rather by hope and 
fear than by logic. 

Freeman. We do not hide indetermination 
in the field of consciousness merely because (as 
you suggest) it can there find safe harbor until 
psychology has become an exact science like 
chemistry. We simply look for it where it 
most likely would be found, supposing it to 
exist. The human will is certainly the most 
complex, individualized and unpredictable fact 
that we know anything about, and, if anything 
is indeterminate, it is. Any simple system 



12 FATED OR FREE? 

would pass over to a determined form at once; 
an indetermined system must be very complex 
and delicately balanced to have more than one 
future state open to it. Now, the facts 
which we call " effort," " doubt," " attention " 
and " deliberate decision " testify to the 
uniquely balanced and unstable nature of the 
will. Again, an indeterminate system of facts 
must have some sort of independence as to its 
environment or else its immediate surroundings 
will determine every change. The personal 
consciousness is the only group of facts we 
know even relatively independent of imme- 
diate environment. Finally, an indeterminate 
system would be hard to reduce to rules and to 
predict with certainty. Deduction is easy in 
mathematics, where we deal with abstract 
forms and numbers. It is not so easy in the 
natural sciences which deal with matter, still 
less so in those which deal with life, and not at 
all easy in those which deal with man. In man 
unpredictability of conduct is lowest in the cus- 
tom-ruled savage and highest in the " erratic " 
genius. All this increasing difficulty of pre- 
diction, of course, does not prove free will; it 
only opens a wider and wider door for its pos- 
sibility. 

The absence of " miracle " in external na- 
ture (if you insist upon that word) is of no 
concern to the indeterminist, for he only looks 



FATED OR FREE? 13 

for freedom where it might possibly be found. 
Suppose there is indetermination farther back 
in evolution than man, exact science need have 
no fear, since the amount of error introduced 
must be far below the margin of error of even 
our most exact calculations. So the " abso- 
lute regularity of the laws of nature " does 
not concern the freewillist even if it does exist, 
and it should not perturb the natural scientist 
even if it doesn't. To be sure, free will would 
prove embarrassing to an exact sociology, like 
Professor Manteller's, which has the ambi- 
tious ultimate aim of writing history in ad- 
vance with a certainty not approached by our 
present knowledge of the past. But I doubt 
if such a sociology is possible even on deter- 
minist grounds, and, until his aim be achieved 
or at least seriously attempted, the social sci- 
ences, like the physical, may freely admit free 
will without endangering their methods or 
results. Even psychology will find the belief 
no obstacle unless it claims certain prediction 
of everything any individual will ever do. 
" Free will, the enemy of science," is a bogie 
which has been used with some success in keep- 
ing thinkers from even considering the possi- 
bility of indeterminism, but it is the emptiest 
scarecrow in all philosophy. The more science 
is able to discover and predict, the better the 
freewillist is pleased, for there is neither hope 



14 FATED OR FREE? 

nor fear that we shall be able to pack the uni- 
verse into a single formula, and until this is 
done by somebody free will cannot be dis- 
proved. 

Denker. If free will is as harmless (and 
in consequence as useless) as you say, how can 
you explain that modern science and philoso- 
phy have so strong an objection to the doc- 
trine? Here we are debating this question, 
seven of us determinists and only one to up- 
hold free will. Would not the same general 
proportion hold wherever scientifically trained 
men debated the question? Of course we can- 
not decide a question like this by any appeal 
to authority, but when the whole weight of sci- 
ence and critical philosophy is against a belief 
there is at least a presumption that it is un- 
founded. 

Freeman. I do not know the opinion of 
" modern science and philosophy," but if you 
refer to the opinions of individual philosophers 
I concede you a large though dwindling ma- 
jority. Half, if not more, of the determinists 
take that stand because they fear that any 
concession to possibility as a real fact in the 
universe would wreck their science by upset- 
ting the power to predict. I think we may 
now agree that these fears are absolutely base- 
less. As for the other half of the determinist 
ranks, they uphold the belief as a corollary 



FATED OR FREE? 15 

from some philosophical doctrine which they 
happen to hold. Materialists and monists 
generally believe in a rigid and unified world 
system and are perforce determinists. Their 
disbelief in the reality or significance of the 
time process also involves a disbelief in free 
will, since the remotest future is to them but 
one thing with the remotest past. Parallel- 
ism in psychology usually involves a belief in 
determinism, since any useful freedom must 
mean that the will can control some bodily 
acts. And, finally, those who hold pantheistic, 
Mohammedan or Calvinistic views in theology 
must be determinists, since their fundamental 
religious basis is the absolute power of God 
and the powerlessness of man. It is not that 
free will has or can be disproved, but because 
it is irreconcilable with some philosophical or 
religious hypothesis, that so many object to 
the doctrine. 



THE FOURTH QUESTION 

Does natural science disprove free will? 

Kohlenstoff. You certainly have taken a 
tremendous task upon yourself, Freeman! By 
your own admission you must overthrow par- 
allelism, the great hypothesis without which 
experimental psychology would be unwork- 
able; root out the basic idea of both idealistic 
and materialistic philosophy; and, finally, 
wind up by a grand attack upon the chief re- 
ligions of the civilized world. The defence of 
the great religions of law I shall leave to Gott- 
lieb, but I think myself able to discuss the psy- 
chology of the matter. 

The very possibility of a scientific psy- 
chology depends upon our ability to obtain 
definite reactions to given stimuli. Did men- 
tal facts sway the physical reactions which 
accompany them, no results could be depended 
upon to hold good for the future. Secondly, 
if mind and body interact, our whole principle 
of the conservation of energy goes by the 
board, since stimulus and reaction need no 

longer be equivalent if that which is not energy 

16 



FATED OR FREE? 17 

disturbs their sequence. Thirdly, as we see in 
cases of hypnotism, sleep and other uncon- 
scious or half-conscious states, the body can 
do very complex acts such as walking, talking 
and solving problems without calling upon the 
aid of the mind. Lastly, it is as absurd to 
imagine a mental fact (such as an act of will) 
producing a bodily result as to imagine a ma- 
gician levitating chairs, tables and other hu- 
man beings by sheer " force of will." If the 
thought " I will move my arm " can do the 
work of the muscles or even of the nerves, why 
cannot a man wreck a train by sitting still and 
thinking " train jump off the track ! " Only 
like produces like, and only physical causes can 
have physical effects. As a psychologist, you 
must know these things and so I merely recall 
them to your attention. I know that some 
say that the whole mind and body question is 
wrongly stated, that matter and consciousness 
are of one reality compact. But, if so, the 
mind is fundamentally as much at one with the 
steam engine as with the cerebral cortex. 
Whether fundamentally one or no, mind and 
matter never interact. It takes the primitive 
imagination of the savage to see any truth in 
a theory which must involve the grotesque im- 
age of a moral ideal pushing brain molecules 
around or bringing about chemical reactions in 
a nerve cell. 



18 FATED OR FREE? 

Freeman. To take your points in order, 
I see no menace to psychology in the theory 
that mind may have its effect upon matter. 
Psychology has not reached anything like ex- 
actness in the higher levels of consciousness 
where alone deliberate choice might operate. 
I have already shown as well as I could how 
free will and the law of the conservation of 
energy need not conflict. As to your argu- 
ment from what the body may do when the 
level of consciousness is low, only simple and 
habitual actions ever become entirely auto- 
matic. We may walk, talk or even do sums 
when asleep, I grant. But we all learned how 
to talk, to walk and to begin our calculations 
when not only awake but more than usually 
alert and attentive. All real mental work 
done when consciousness is at a low level rests 
upon a foundation of work done when con- 
sciousness was intense, at the very period 
when nerve action almost seems to hesitate and 
await the command of the conscious will. As 
to your last argument, it is quite believable 
that mind can influence a particular form of 
highly complex matter, such as the cerebral 
cortex, without having the power to affect 
crude, unspecialized, " dead " matter, such as 
the iron of an engine is in comparison with 
living nerve tissue. Surely the uniquely close 
connection between the particular bit of matter 



FATED OR FREE? 19 

in our heads and our consciousness needs no 
pointing out. To be sure, we cannot, by the 
mere willing, move our neighbor's arm. But 
then we are not " hitched up " to our neigh- 
bor's brain. We cannot argue from the pow- 
erlessness of our mind to influence outside na- 
ture to its powerlessness to influence our own 
bodies. 

The interactionist has positive arguments 
too. The facts of our especially intense con- 
sciousness at moments of decision ; of the as- 
sumption by one part of the brain of the func- 
tions of another part which has been injured 
or even lost ; and the close connection between 
pain and danger to the body all point to an in- 
fluence of mind on body. 

Kohlexstoff. Your points are not so hard 
to meet. Because the mental states of pain, 
pleasure, attention, inattention and so on are 
found together with certain bodily states does 
not prove that the mental facts cause the bod- 
ily ones. As to the brain assuming functions 
lost through injury, nothing is more natural 
to anyone acquainted with the delicate and 
adaptable nature of that organ. Conscious- 
ness, finally, cannot be indispensable to the 
performance of bodily functions, for through- 
out the vegetable kingdom and most of the an- 
imal, there is probably neither pleasure nor 
pain operative, and yet development proceeds. 



20 FATED OR FREE? 

Interactionism, like witchcraft, may be possi- 
ble; is it, therefore, probable or in any way a 
useful idea? 

Freeman. It is certainly a useful idea, for 
it simplifies the problem of the origin of con- 
sciousness by evolution. If the body can act 
with perfect efficiency as an automaton, why 
does it not always do so? If the mind cannot 
by its presence or nature modify conduct and 
so aid survival, how does it happen that the 
body has a mind? More important yet is the 
question why consciousness takes such a form 
that it seems to be essential to the proper con- 
trol of the body to insure its survival. 

Denker. Do you regard everything as in- 
explicable which cannot be shown to be a case 
of natural selection? Has consciousness no 
function but to keep the body in good condi- 
tion? If you must go into metaphysics, why 
ask " why has the body a mind " rather than 
" why has the mind a body " ? The latter is 
just as much an argument against parallelism. 

Freeman. Exactly so. I do not regard 
consciousness at all as a means to an end, how- 
ever. But whatever may be the ultimate aim 
of the whole process of evolution, and I would 
phrase it as the strengthening and deepening 
of consciousness, still improvement always 
comes in evolution when needed for survival. 
We may have been given the eye because sight 



FATED OR FREE? 21 

is a delightful thing. But the point at which 
the organ appeared was when its function was 
necessary to aid the organism to avoid distant 
enemies or to seek distant food. By all anal- 
ogies, consciousness, or at any rate the pe- 
culiar extension of consciousness which dis- 
tinguishes the higher animals, must have arisen 
when automatic action no longer secured sur- 
vival. 



THE FIFTH QUESTION 

What can our consciousness tell us of free mill? 

Kohlenstoff. Well, parallelism still seems 
to me the more probable hypothesis. But even 
if interactionism is true, free will is as far 
from being proved as ever. Free will, I agree, 
is only possible if interactionism is true, but 
the latter is no evidence for the former. Every 
presumption is against your theory and you 
have no jot of evidence to support it. Deter- 
minism holds the field in every science and will 
continue to do so until its opponents bring 
some evidence to show that their theory is more 
than a pure assumption. 

Freeman. Experimental psychology has 
not yet been able to test the question, but in- 
trospection throws some light upon the sub- 
ject which, little as it is, is the only direct 
evidence there is on either side. In our de- 
cisions there seems to be an element of choice. 
It may be that this is a valid introspection and 
informs us of what really takes place. 

Kohlenstoff. Oh, We were waiting for you 
to fall into that trap ! I have never met an 



FATED OR FREE? 23 

indeterminist yet that didn't do so sooner or 
later. The only positive argument ever 
brought forward for free will is the old cry : 
" I can't help sort of feeling that I can choose 
to do one thing or another as I please." But 
for this feeling no one would ever have 
dreamed of such an absurdity as a man's 
choosing without a motive or against a 
stronger motive. And this, your main reli- 
ance, yes, your only one, is a simple fallacy! 
Any number of things " seem as though " they 
were other than they are in reality. The sun 
seems to revolve about the earth, the earth 
itself seems flat, the water in a basin may seem 
hot to one hand and cold to another. We live 
in a world packed with illusions and the knowl- 
edge of the truth does not destroy the feeling 
of illusion. Our perceptions are valueless 
when not confirmed by the results of scientific 
reasoning, and it is the recognition of this that 
makes what we call the scientific attitude of 
mind. Psychology supplies us with a hundred 
instances of illusion, any of which is of fully 
as much evidential value as the much talked 
of " feeling of freedom." Moreover this feel- 
ing does not appear to be found in everyone, 
and where it occurs it may differ vastly in de- 
gree. 

Freeman. After all this rhetoric, it is a 
shame to be compelled to state that I do not 



24 FATED OR FREE? 

regard the direct evidence from consciousness 
as the strongest evidence for free will. But I 
will not admit that this evidence is to be 
thrown out of court without examination. It 
is true that our perception of the motion of 
the sun is of little value when unchecked by 
astronomy, but even an astronomer would not 
be uninterested in the sun's account of itself. 
Faulty as it is, introspection is always of in- 
terest in psychology and in some cases it is 
the only method that can be applied. We 
must wait many years before the laboratory 
can decide the question of free will, and in the 
meantime the testimony of introspection sup- 
ports its truth. 

Kohlenstoff. But in this case the testi- 
mony of consciousness can be shown to be mis- 
taken. You yourself admit that our intuitions 
on the subject altogether exaggerate the extent 
of our freedom. We feel free entirely when 
making a choice, but no sane man, even though 
he may believe in free will, can maintain that 
heredity and environment have no effect at all. 
Now if our consciousness can exaggerate so 
grossly, why cannot it lie outright quite as 
easily? And what about those persons who do 
not have your " sense of freedom " ; a type not 
infrequently found especially among scien- 
tifically trained men? Are the introspections 
of Huxley, who did not believe in free will, of 



FATED OR FREE? 25 

less value than those of the majority who rely 
most upon their " feeling of freedom "? As a 
matter of fact, the obstinate illusion of free 
choice is counteracted by a training in science. 
You yourself restrict freedom to narrower lim- 
its than a savage or an uneducated man. Ed- 
ucation largely consists in learning to know 
and feel the forces which have made us what 
we are. 

Freeman. I admit that the part played by 
free choice in our mental life is much exag- 
gerated by consciousness. But the errors of 
consciousness are more commonly of degree 
than of kind. Because a little fire may create 
a big smudge it does not follow that where 
there is smoke there is no fire. I do not think, 
either, that the absence of the perception of 
choice means the absence of the fact. I sim- 
ply incline to the side that has the majority of 
introspections in its favor. 

Dexkee. I am as democratic as you in pol- 
itics, but we cannot determine questions of 
science by counting heads. The bulk of intro- 
spections you are welcome to, we will content 
ourselves with the weight. Those scientists 
who have closely examined the feeling of 
" choice " have found a simpler and truer ex- 
planation for it than the revolutionary doc- 
trine of indeterminism. I believe the feeling 
of which you speak to consist essentially in a 



26 FATED OR FREE? 

certain sense of straining or effort. It is 
because and when a decision is made with dif- 
ficulty that we think we are acting freely. 
Now this can be thoroughly and satisfactorily 
explained as a case of energy lost in overcom- 
ing a smaller force with a greater, and need 
not at all be set down as a putting forth of 
effort to overthrow the stronger force on be- 
half of the weaker. I think you were right in 
not relying too much on your " sense of free- 
dom," for it is a broken reed if there ever was 
one. But what other argument have you? 

Freeman. Two small points in connection 
with this matter occur to me. First, this feel- 
ing of effort is interpreted as choice by almost 
all of those who have it. In the second place, 
this feeling occurs just when we might expect 
free choice, when consciousness is intense, self- 
regardful and unstably balanced. Besides, 
your calm assumption that all the people who 
have a right to an opinion on the matter ac- 
cept the determinist account of the sense of 
freedom is almost annoying. Some savages 
believe in chance, but how many more in fate ! 
Over all primitive literature hangs its 
shadow — 

Denker. Fatalism is one thing and scien- 
tific determinism is another. 

Freeman. Surely. And equally removed 
is modern indeterminism from the " chance " 



FATED OR FREE? 27 

and " miracle " of the savage. The indeter- 
minism of to-day is no left-over from Thomas 
of Aquino, but a critical philosophy which 
would not have been possible before Darwin 
and most of the arguments for which depend 
upon the progress in psychology during the 
past twenty-five years. 



THE SIXTH QUESTION 

How might freedom have come about? 

Kohuenstoff. Did somebody say Darwin? 
I am glad that you chose of your own " free 
will " to wander into the fields of biology, 
though I think fate must have had its share in 
delivering you into the hands of the fowler in 
that way. If you had assumed that free will 
was a mysterious entity inserted into the per- 
sonality at some stage of existence, it would 
be hard to disprove your case (although im- 
possible, of course, to prove it), but if the will, 
like the rest of consciousness, is a product of 
evolution, the possibility of its freedom is gone 
once for all. Uncaused or (if you insist on 
the term) self-caused action is of another di- 
mension from caused action and can no more 
arise from it than figs can grow from thistles. 
If it be true that some actions are indeter- 
minate, they are unique, unprecedented actions 
indeed. When did this strange power to " in- 
determinate " arise? How did it ever come 
about? Is it confined to man? Is it found in 

all men? At what time does it arise in the in- 

28 



FATED OR FREE? 29 

dividual? Where does it come from and 
whither does it go when we return to the hum- 
drum life of normal causation? How does so 
considerable an interruption of the order of 
the universe leave such doubtful and dubious 
traces? They used to tell us that "nature 
does not make leaps," but if she can leap from 
the causal order to the — " uncausal order " 
shall I say? — why she outrivals her own grass- 
hoppers ! 

Freeman. People make just the same ob- 
jection to immortality, that since we cannot 
fix the point in the life history of the individ- 
ual or the species when consciousness became a 
permanent thing, therefore it never did so. 
But that objection would apply just as 
strongly to many other elements of conscious- 
ness which we all know exist without being able 
to time them exactly: sight, hearing, memory, 
imagination, reason, the ethical and esthetic 
instincts, the will, consciousness itself. At 
one time these were not; now they are. 

Kohlexstoff. I beg your pardon, but the 
cases you point to are not at all analogous. 
All of the elements of life you mentioned came 
into being gradually, they were developed by 
centuries or even by millions of years. The 
basis of our entire mental life is found in all 
living matter; possibly in all matter. Many 
philosophers have found the roots of the will 



30 FATED OR FREE? 

in the inorganic realm. Evolution is not a 
creation out of nothing, but an unfolding of 
what already exists in the germ. But with 
free will the case is different. Causality does 
not admit of more or less ; free will exists or it 
does not, — at one bound it springs from 
nothingness to being. Indeterminism may be 
an exception to evolution; it is certainly no 
example of it. In other cases science has re- 
duced seeming differences of kind to mere dif- 
ferences of degree. Thus organic species, 
once thought fixed and permanent, are now 
held to> be branches from a common trunk. Even 
the elements have but a relative individuality it 
now appears, since radium appeared upon the 
scene to show us a new " origin of species " in 
the inorganic world. But the difference be- 
tween the caused and the uncaused (or self- 
caused) is no difference of degree but of kind, 
and no evolutionary bridge is long enough to 
connect the two. 

Freeman. For all I know to the contrary, 
freedom may be as old as consciousness itself, 
though only becoming important in man. But 
if, as I think more probable, it did have an ori- 
gin at a definite time, it is but one case of the 
birth of personality. Evolution does not 
mean that there are no differences in kind, sim- 
ply that at a certain point of development a 
difference in degree becomes one in kind. It 



FATED OR FREE? 31 

is hard to tell at just what point we have a 
new species, but there is a degree of difference 
beyond which varieties will not cross. It is 
hard to tell just when self-consciousness arises, 
but there is a difference in kind between per- 
sons that we all recognize. As to our inability 
to detect the presence of free will in a given 
conscious state, this is paralleled by the diffi- 
culty in analyzing any complex mental process. 
But at least we can pick out the cases in which 
free action might occur; moments, namely, of 
choice with effort. Nor is there any reason 
why a free act should show its nature by any 
external peculiarity, for the indetermination of 
the will is but a small part of any mental state, 
even when a controlling one. 

But to return to the main question: when is 
freedom possible? I do not know; I hazard 
the guess that its origin approximated that of 
self-consciousness and reason. All we can say 
at present is that at a certain stage of insta- 
bility, complexity and self-dependence of the 
will-state it is possible. The only way to lo- 
cate it with certainty would be to calculate all 
the forces tending to determine action and then 
see if the action which occurs is invariably 
what we predict. 



THE SEVENTH QUESTION 

How is freedom related to the sciences of man? 

Mante-LLer, That's the true method! Of 
course we do not yet possess absolute knowl- 
edge of the laws which govern our life, but we 
know enough to be sure that such laws exist. 
We cannot as yet determine each individual 
act, but we do know and can tell in advance the 
big factors that make for social action. Some 
freewillists talk about the impossibility of re- 
ducing human action to the certainty of biology 
or physics. We can do more, we can reduce it 
to the certainty of mathematics. Of all hu- 
man choices, what is more important, unique, 
individual, unpredictable and proverbially er- 
ratic than the affairs of love ? Yet " the way 
of a man with a maid " is laid down in hundreds 
of tables of the marriage rate. We can follow 
every rise and fall of marriage rate, birth rate, 
death rate, suicide rate, criminality rate, and 
trace each to its cause with as much certainty 
as if we were dealing with curves of pressure, 
temperature, density, boiling points or solu- 
bility products. We know the factors which 



FATED OR FREE? 33 

make wages rise and fall as we know those 
which make the mercury in a barometer rise and 
fall. We can predict changes in prices far 
more accurately than changes in the weather, 
and panics are no more mysterious than trade 
winds and come as regularly. Every teacher, 
every politician, every criminologist, every 
physician, every successful business man bases 
his methods on the known and assured laws of 
human nature in the mass. And yet scientific 
economics is no older than Adam Smith, soci- 
ology not so old as that, experimental psy- 
chology younger yet and scientific history 
hardly in existence ! In a century more the 
social sciences may expect to accomplish almost 
anything in the way of predicting human con- 
duct, judging from the record of the past 
twenty years. Do not think that this applies 
only to the " masses " not yet raised to the 
free will level. Galton, Wood, Ostwald and 
many others have examined the origins of 
genius and shown conclusively that great men 
are simply the carriers of a great heredity. 
We know ethics now to be a question of 
" mores," of customs adopted, consciously or 
instinctively, to ensure group survival. The 
origins and laws of religious experience are well 
understood. Even esthetics is being reduced to 
a science, and not even our tastes and idiosyn- 
crasies can maintain themselves as exceptions 



34 FATED OR FREE? 

to law. Science which has driven chance for- 
ever from the domain of inorganic and organic 
nature will not suffer it to remain in the most 
important branches of knowledge, the knowl- 
edge of human relationships. Even now, in 
practice, everyone reckons upon the predicta- 
bility and rationality of the conduct of others 
while cherishing free will for himself alone ! Of 
course our own actions, however they may seem 
to us at the time, are as determined as our 
neighbors' obviously are. 

Freeman. I accept your challenge to set 
limits to the power of the social sciences to 
predict with certainty. Let us assume (no 
hard assumption for you, at least, to make) 
that all human action is in reality determined. 
Even so, could we ever be in a position to pre- 
dict the future with any approach to certainty? 
The first limit lies in the complexity of the sub- 
ject. Man's will is affected by physical, chem- 
ical and biological factors, and so until we know 
all about natural science we can not even begin 
to predict human conduct with certainty. 
Again, in studying the sources of the will we are 
studying the very core of our being, not some 
outside reality which is not affected by the act 
of analysis. The third limit is a time limit. 
That which holds good to-day as a " law of 
human nature " is subject to rapid and increas- 
ingly rapid evolution. Could we perfectly 



FATED OR FREE? 35 

comprehend the world as it stands to-day our 
conclusions would be out of date before we 
could get them all on paper. Finally, a per- 
fect science of human behavior would need to 
keep its conclusions secret lest they fall into the 
hands of someone who would be displeased by 
them and would act differently " just to show " 
that he could. Now all of these possibilities, 
that of failing to understand certainly all of 
the million factors which determine conduct, of 
misreading one's own mind, of not fitting the 
science of human behavior to a constantly ac- 
celerating rate of change in its subject matter, 
of letting somebody know the conclusions of the 
science who would be repelled by them, all are 
independent of any possibility of free choice. 
Yet they will forever make an exact study of 
human conduct before it happens impossible, 
and only in that way can determinism ever be 
conclusively proved. 

Manteller. It is sufficient that we can 
predict human behavior closely enough to make 
free will improbable. Many things, such as 
witchcraft, cannot be disproved by showing that 
no such things have ever happened in any part 
of the universe at any time. Science has noth- 
ing to do with such fantastic possibilities as 
witchcraft, free will or any other miracle, and 
simply ignores them in practice. Upon the 
theory of determinism are built the great sci- 



36 FATED OR FREE? 

ences that deal with man, and upon no other 
foundation can they be laid. 

Freeman. But the sciences of man do not 
deal with individual relations. You might 
study a curve of the marriage rate a long time 
before finding out whether or not Miss Smith 
would marry Mr. Wilson. In curves taking 
only a few cases into consideration there are 
variations as significant as their uniformities. 

Manteller. All such variations fall within 
a small margin when enough cases are consid- 
ered. Could we view a chemical reaction as a 
mass and at the same time follow the course of 
each individual atom we would have a close 
parallel with our human situation. The reac- 
tion, in the mass is absolutely uniform and 
regular and conforms in every particular to 
natural laws which can be put in the form of 
mathematical equations. But could we trace 
the atoms at the same time — what a differ- 
ence ! Moving and mixing, joining and part- 
ing, a hurly-burly of whirling points appar- 
ently subject to no law but chance desire, the 
atoms would seem as free as any human being 
could wish to be. But for science the first as- 
pect, the reaction in mass, is the true and sig- 
nificant one. So in human society. The 
" atoms " here are so large and complex and 
like ourselves that we notice individual varia- 
tions more than general laws. But the laws 



FATED OR FREE? 37 

exist none the less. We human atoms have no 
more right to think ourselves free from the uni- 
versal rule of law than our lesser brethren in a 
test-tube. 

Freeman. You forget that human uni- 
formity is not half so great as it seems to be, 
for cases of free will may balance each other. 
Suppose that in one year 43 burglars com- 
mitted crimes which they need not have com- 
mitted and 39 persons were tempted to steal 
but refrained. Then the variation from the 
expected " burglary rate " due to free choice 
would be only 43 minus 39 or four. These 
four cases could safely be ignored among per- 
haps a thousand and then you would tell a free- 
willist : " See, crime is invariably determined 
by social factors and not by free choice, for 
the year's burglary rate is almost exactly that 
which any criminologist w T ould have predicted." 
But in those uniform figures no less than 82 
cases of freedom would lie hidden. Conscious- 
ness may over-estimate the extent of free will 
but not so grossly as statistics must always 
underestimate it. 

Manteller. You say I " underestimate " 
free will! Why, you have just shown that free 
will is impossible. If free actions can nullify 
each other and reduce down to an average, 
then conditions will be just the same whether 
free will is true or not ; in other words, free will 



38 FATED OR FREE? 

is impotent and without meaning. What's 
more, since free acts are causeless and happen 
at random, they will occur according to the 
law of chance distribution and thus lawless- 
ness itself is subject to law. In the long run 
chance itself, could it occur, would be as reg- 
ular in its action as anything else. 

Freeman. As far as the mere numbering of 
free acts goes you are right enough. But num- 
ber is one of the least important things about 
human actions. When an employer returns to 
his office after an absence he does not ask his 
clerk : " How many things have you done in 
my absence?"; he asks, rather, "What have 
you done in my absence? " Even if atoms had 
free will (which I don't believe) it would matter 
very little, for what a single atom can accom- 
plish is rather limited in scope. In some 
reactions, it is true, an atom can play an im- 
portant part, but this role is always a rather 
simple one and, since atoms commonly travel 
in bunches, some would be pretty sure to play 
it. But human beings rise or fall in the scale 
of evolution by a succession of decisions. 
These decisions may be free or they may be 
determined, but to say that they^are merely ex- 
amples of chance distribution and hence can 
" nullify " each other, is just as if one would 
say that a spark which sets off a powder ex- 
plosion is nullified by the fact that another 



FATED OR FREE? 39 

spark did not. A thousand sparks scattered 
at random in a powder factory, and a thou- 
sand free decisions are both cases of the " law 
of chance distribution," but — ! 



THE EIGHTH QUESTION 

Are heredity and environment omnipotent? 

Manteller. We are getting to close grips 
at last. These decisions you speak of are in- 
teractions of heredity and environment and 
nothing else. Of course these factors differ in 
different individuals and hence arise all the so- 
called exceptions to the laws of human action. 
But these individual differences are not beyond 
the power of science to explain, not as excep- 
tions to our laws but as instances of them. It 
is estimated that children of eminent parents 
have one thousand times the chance of becoming 
eminent that ordinary children have. The ta- 
bles of heredity are being worked out with such 
completeness that no human character is longer 
a mystery to any trained anthropologist in 
possession of the hereditary facts. Never a 
deviation in thousands of recorded cases from 
the results to be expected from Mendel's laws ! 
Not only the character of the individual but 
that of the race is a function of the unalter- 
able physical basis of heredity. The only per- 
manent advances have been made through the 
selection of superior types. All advances in 

40 



FATED OR FREE? 41 

civilization which do not possess this heredi- 
tary security depend upon the educating of 
each new generation and without it they are 
lost forever. No stream can rise higher than 
its source, and defectives will never breed any- 
thing else than defectives forever. 

Of course environment is of influence, too, 
but it can merely patch and color the fabric 
given to it. Material conditions are perhaps 
the fundamental environmental influences. 
Modern history shows us how classes, laws, 
governments, customs, morals and the like are 
in every case only explainable on the basis of 
economic necessity. Thus, slavery and polyg- 
amy arise and are considered right when 
natural conditions make them necessary. 
When these conditions change, they become un- 
popular and hence " wrong." Democracy and 
monogamy replace them when the increasing 
command of man over nature makes slave labor 
and wholesale domestic labor unprofitable. 
There is no fact in history for which no ade- 
quate explanation can be found, to explain 
which we must suppose free choice. 

It is not different in the case of an indi- 
vidual. The most unaccountable actions be- 
come clear in proportion as we study a man's 
parents, his early training and all the features 
in the situation in which he acted. Let each 
of us look back upon the course of his life, 



42 FATED OR FREE? 

trace the peculiar features in his character to 
his ancestors, consider the influence of past ex- 
perience upon our more recent actions and we 
find there is no room left for the arbitrary 
" will " to play its part. When we make a 
decision we may not notice the factors deter- 
mining it at the time, but upon looking back- 
ward how clearly it stands out ! Free will can- 
not be true, for between heredity (which makes 
our characters) and the forces of environment 
(which determine in what concrete acts our in- 
born tendencies shall issue) there is nothing 
left to explain. 

Freeman. I admit everything, that is, al- 
most everything. We do not come into the 
world as " blank sheets of paper " but as 
closely written pages, very hard to alter later. 
Environment may choke off all our chances of 
growth and leave us like savages or it may 
force our latent capacities to the uttermost. 
I admit that ninety-nine per cent, of our lives 
pass without any act of will at all, free or not ; 
that free will can only exist when there is some 
balancing of motives (a rare occurrence) ; and, 
finally, that when we might act freely we hardly 
ever do. But free will may exist none the less. 
Many a discovery have scientists made by look- 
ing in the fourth decimal place. Many a rare 
chemical has been found in flue dust or rub- 
bish heap. Many a law and theory of ancient 



FATED OR FREE? 43 

authority has been overthrown by some little 
exception it could not cover. No true scientist 
will deny free will on the ground that heredity 
and environment are important factors in our 
lives, any more than he will deny the existence 
of radium because oxygen is some billion times 
more common. So in a question like this, the 
real test is the seeming exception. We all 
know that there are persons of good parentage 
and admirable training who do turn out badly, 
and others, — children of paupers or criminals 
and educated under conditions which would ruin 
most children, — who end among the saints. 
Such cases are, no doubt, the exception but — 
there they are. 

Manteller. We do not always know 
which environment and which heredity are the 
best. Ry " superior type " the eugenist does 
not mean the rich or titled ; often quite the con- 
trary. He means the type, wherever found, 
which is eugenically superior, which does in 
fact produce the healthiest and brainiest per- 
sons. 

Freeman. Very true. Rut this very diffi- 
culty of locating the best heredity and environ- 
ment in a given case makes it impossible to 
prove determinism in that way. Resides, in 
defining the superior type as that which pro- 
duces the superior persons you are begging the 
question a little. You take the superior per- 



44 FATED OR FREE? 

son and put him among the eugenic types. 
Then you say that his ability and virtue are 
completely accounted for by the fact that he is 
a eugenic type. But the character is not a 
static but a dynamic affair ; it varies as the re- 
sult of decisions. From a good man we look 
for good acts, and so we are not surprised at 
hearing of some noble deed in the past. We 
say, " of course, that's just like him." But we 
may not be right in assuming that the man's 
present self was always what it is now. His 
present character may have been the result of 
past decisions made in the face of strong temp- 
tation. That we do good because we are good 
is only half of the truth. We are good be- 
cause we do good. 

History does look ordered and arranged 
when we look back upon it. We say for in- 
stance : " The German is naturally scientific, 
efficient and militaristic. No wonder Germany 
has produced its Fredericks and Bismarcks, its 
Kants and Haeckels." But we forget to ask 
whether Germany would be such fertile soil for 
certain kinds of talent if no one had first pre- 
pared the soil. In the Middle Ages Germany 
was not especially interested in science; the 
Holy Roman Empire was no model of efficient 
government ; in the days of Napoleon the 
standing army was a standing joke. Again 
hundreds of solemn historians set it down as a 



FATED OR FREE? 45 

law of nature that the French people are es- 
pecially fickle and insubordinate and so it is 
only natural that they should have started so 
many revolutions and that their ministries 
change every few months. But there was a 
time when the French people were as law-abid- 
ing and submissive as any in Europe, enduring 
a tyranny for centuries without revolt. If w r e 
avoid the easy mistake of reading the past in 
the terms of the present, past history no longer 
seems as though it " had to be " just as it was 
and no otherwise. On the contrary free will 
seems to me a useful idea for the historian be- 
cause it helps in some measure to explain the 
rapidity of human progress. According to 
many of our leading biologists our hereditary 
character seems to have been much the same 
in the latter part of the old stone age that it 
is now. Our brains have certainly grown no 
larger, and perhaps no better, in the mean- 
time. Our natural environment has not varied 
much since the close of the glacial period. 
Only our social environment has changed. 
Was this due solely to some happy combination 
of a good stock and a favorable environment 
at sometime in the past or did an increase in 
free choice make us more independent of an un- 
changing environment and a practically un- 
changing heredity? The latter theory would 
account for more than the former. 



THE NINTH QUESTION 

// free will is true, does it matter? 

Smith. I do not see. Freeman, how you can 
ascribe such great results to such an insignifi- 
cant factor as free will seems to be on your 
own showing. I have noted some of your de- 
fences. You are willing to allow " any amount 
of practical power to the determined forces of 
nature," you " admit that the part played by 
free choice in our mental life is much exagger- 
ated by consciousness " ; you grant that cases 
of free will may counteract each other; you 
" admit that ninety-nine per cent, of our lives 
pass without any act of will at all " ; " that free 
will can only exist when there is some balancing 
of motives " (which you well call " a rare oc- 
currence ") ; and " that when we might act 
freely we hardly ever do." In short, loyalty 
to the obvious facts of nature has forced you 
to make one concession after another till all 
that is left is the fair, faint chance that some- 
where something might go wrong with the law 
of causality, but that the accident wouldn't be 

serious enough to damage science. You have 

46 



FATED OR FREE? 47 

peeled and peeled away at indeterminism till al- 
most nothing is left, and that little, in practice, 
seems to be indistinguishable from determinism. 
Free will, as you said, seems to have the rarity 
of radium, but I do not see that this fact gives 
it the importance of radium. Your theory is 
indeed a timid, defenseless one, chiefly occupied 
in hiding itself from attack ; " harmless and 
useless " as Denker called it. But this very 
uselessness subjects it to attack from a new 
quarter, the attack of pragmatism. Pragma- 
tism is an agent from the humane society and 
its business is to put sick and suffering theories 
out of their pain. If a theory does not make 
a real difference, it has no real meaning; it is 
simply a scholastic quibble. Scientists do look 
in the fourth decimal place for varied readings 
and in powder factories for sparks (to use two 
of your entertaining metaphors), but they do 
not look for trained elephants under their beds 
or for sea horses in their coffee. Some possi- 
bilities are remote enough and irrelevant 
enough to be ignored. 

Upon the indeterminist showing, how im- 
portant a factor in our life is this precious free 
will? It seems to be limited to one species of 
animals, our own. Then it can only be found 
in those highly exceptional individuals who 
sometimes decide matters by deliberate consid- 
eration and choice. Thirdly, freedom is con- 



48 FATED OR FREE? 

fined to one phase of mental life, deliberate 
willing. Fourthly, according to most indeter- 
minists, it occurs only in cases of moral willing. 
Temptation must be strong. It must not be 
too strong ; we must get that " balance of 
forces " you are always insisting upon. There 
are several other limitations, but I really 
haven't time to list them all. Take the rare 
exceptional case when we might have free 
choice. As you admitted, we usually don't even 
then. Suppose it does occur. Why, even 
then (I quote you) " the indetermination of the 
will is but a small part of any mental state." 
Of course this must be so. The " freest " act 
imaginable is almost altogether a question of 
brain habits, nerve habits and muscle habits. 
Even in the mind itself the " free " part of the 
will is lost in a roaring tempest of motives, 
habits and impulses. It is a factor too small 
for psychology to find. According to this 
picture of free will as painted by its friends, 
the influence of all the indeterminate actions 
since the world was created comes to less than 
the influence of the dog-star on a presidential 
election. 

Freeman. I think that some indeterminists 
underestimate the extent of free will just as 
others overestimate it. For instance there is 
no need to confine the role of free choice to 
ethical decisions. Choices involving questions 



FATED OR FREE? 49 

of right and wrong, while different in nature 
from others, are not special cases psychologic- 
ally. Wherever there is choice there may be 
free choice. Wherever there is choice-with-ef- 
fort there is probably some element of freedom, 
though it is not always the determining factor. 
It is true that choices are rare and when they 
do occur the indeterminate part of the will is 
only one small factor in the total conscious 
state. But it may none the less be the con- 
trolling one. You seem so fond of my images 
that I will provide you with another one. You 
know from your chemistry that there are many 
substances w T hich can be mixed together in a 
pure dry state without combining, but upon 
the introduction of a grain of dirt or a drop of 
water will unite at once. There are many in- 
stances other than this of a small cause produc- 
ing a great effect. Take a supersaturated 
solution of some salt. If the solution is left 
alone the salt will not precipitate. But intro- 
duce a single costal of that salt and a heavy 
precipitation will result. Or again, take the 
case of an explosion in which a single explosive 
cap may set off tons of combustible material. 
In these cases we have good analogies to the 
action of free choice. 

Kohlenstoff. We know these facts as well 
as you, but do you mean to say that the mind 
is a mixture of explosive gases, a salt solution 



50 FATED OR FREE? 

or simply a stick of dynamite? Metaphors 
are good as illustrations but rather indifferent 
as substitutes for argument. 

Freeman. The instances I have given are 
more than mere metaphors. They all illus- 
trate a principle, as true in consciousness as 
anywhere else ; if any system be unstable 
enough, any force, however small, may throw 
the whole system into another form. Freedom 
is but a small element at any time, but since, if 
it occurs at all, it occurs at just those times 
when the self is in a " critical " state (as we 
say in physics) it may be a controlling one. 
Its infinitesimal " push " upsets the delicate 
balance of forces and rearranges the whole 
structure of the will, which then gives its fiat 
and passes over into a stable state of decision. 
The trace of indetermination in our conscious- 
ness cannot of itself accomplish action but it 
is perhaps capable of releasing other and larger 
forces able to produce action. 

Smith. Even granting that free will might 
cause an act now and then, such cases must be 
too rare to matter. Especially does free will 
seem to be unimportant in the field of ethics, 
although when urged at all it is usually urged 
on ethical grounds. If it is true that morality 
means moral responsibility and moral responsi- 
bility depends upon free will, this only shows 
how unimportant morality is ! Evidently it 



FATED OR FREE? 51 

has little or nothing to do with good or bad 
conduct, since by the free will standard the 
vicious degenerate who resists one temptation 
in the course of a lifetime is a whole moral 
heaven above the man who has formed a habit 
of well doing and could no more wrong another 
than jump over a house. To the freewillist 
virtue depends for its existence upon tempta- 
tion and exists as little in the saint w 7 hose noble 
impulses and profound conviction of the right 
raise him above temptation as in the moral 
weakling unable to resist it. This is going 
" beyond good and evil " with a vengeance ! 
Free will seems doomed to disappear along with 
the evil impulses that gave rise to it. In the 
meantime we are to be saved or lost, not accord- 
ing to the general character of our lives, but 
according to the ratio between our good 
" free " acts and our bad ones, even though we 
may not have acted freely ten times in a life- 
time. Honestly, is it worth while our keeping 
up heaven and hell and " moral responsibility " 
just for that? Why exhaust one's brain try- 
ing to save an infinitesimal " freedom " to a 
universe which has no use for it? 

Freeman. I have already shown that the 
rarity of free will is no argument against its 
existence. Just as little is it an argument 
against its importance. It was not I who 
called freedom " harmless and useless." Not 



m FATED OR FREE? 

only is freedom at times very useful, but it may 
be in the highest degree harmful. I said (and 
it is quite true) that the theory of free will 
can work no harm to science. I never denied 
that wrong decisions might wreck human lives. 
Freedom is more to be feared than any force of 
nature, because if we are lost on its account 
we have only ourselves to blame. Unimportant 
acts are usually matters of routine and are 
taken care of by instinct and habit. Reflective 
decision and deliberate choice are characteris- 
tic of the crises and turning points of our lives. 
A single free decision may start a long train 
of causes and effects which may determine the 
whole after life of a man or of a nation. The 
importance of free action extends itself to all 
the results which flow from it. 

As to the ethical question, it is quite true 
that moral good or evil depends upon free 
choice. But it does not follow that only for 
free acts can we be held responsible. We are 
responsible not only for our use of free choice 
but for our power of using it. Wherever we 
could act freely we are justly responsible if 
we don't. This potential freedom of ours is 
probably a thousand times as great as our 
actual freedom. Again, while we cannot take 
credit for the " virtue of our ancestors " or 
for our environment, yet just so far as our 
character is the result of free decision all acts 



FATED OR FREE? 53 

which flow from it are responsible acts whether 
free or not. No one can deliberately form bad 
habits and hope to escape blame by pleading 
that he was in the grip of a habit and could no 
longer help himself. Justice places the blame 
on the man who formed the habit, of course. 
If free will is true, the sphere of moral responsi- 
bility is great indeed, though only God knows 
how great. Neither grant nor deny freedom 
on the ground that " it doesn't matter." If 
true, it does matter and it's going to matter 
more in the future. Finally, you are wrong in 
saying that the virtuous man has no tempta- 
tions and so needs no free will. It is like say- 
ing that a wise man has no intellectual diffi- 
culties and so does not need to think. As the 
will is set free from coarse temptations it has 
its own battles to wage and conquests to make 
on levels undreamed of by our weaker moral 
imaginations. 



THE TENTH QUESTION 

Does necessity show itself m the products of 
the mind? 

Riter. On the highest levels of imagination 
man stands and looks at the winding course of 
human life and sees nothing but the reign of 
universal law. From the old Greek dramatists 
to Ibsen and Thomas Hardy all great art has 
been distinguished by the one sure mark of " in- 
evitability." A poor novel almost always is one 
in which the events seem glued on to the char- 
acters instead of springing naturally from 
them as a tree bears fruit after its kind. A 
good novel is an unfolding of character and a 
revelation of the inevitable consequences of its 
growth. There is no need to multiply exam- 
ples ; you know that this is so. 

Freeman. It is true that in a realistic novel 
events do occur only as they have been fore- 
casted in character. But the merit of a book 
does not consist in our reading the last page 
in the first. The greatest novels and dramas, 
it seems to me, deal with choices which deter- 
mine at once the event and the future charac- 

54 



FATED OR FREE? 55 

ter of the agent. Of course we must except 
books and plays written to prove determinism. 
The Greek drama started with the avowed pur- 
pose of revealing the workings of Nemesis and 
of exploiting the sense of doom for artistic 
purposes. The modern realist, Zola for exam- 
ple, sets out to prove that his puppets are 
moved by strings of heredity and environment. 
He does prove it so far as his book-world goes, 
but we are no more bound to accept his conclu- 
sions as true of real life than you would be 
bound to accept my verdict if I wrote a book to 
prove free will. 

Riter. That is not quite a parallel case, 
Freeman, for (excuse me) you are not a great 
artist. But you miss my meaning. I did not 
say that realistic novels need be true to life. I 
meant that since the highest products of the 
mind are subject to necessity it is not probable 
that the mind which created them was lawless. 
If you think that all the logic of tale or drama 
has no other object than to " prove deter- 
minism," you are to be pitied. But artistic 
logic can be seen in fields where even you would 
not look for concealed Calvinists. Did Bee- 
thoven write his music just to prove that each 
note suggests the next? He did show it as do 
all great musicians, but the importance of their 
testimony is increased by the fact that it is 
altogether unconscious. It is so in painting. 



56 FATED OR FREE? 

From a painting of one of the great masters 
not a line or a shade could be altered without 
harming the whole effect. All arts have a 
subtle mathematics which no machine in the 
world but the artist's brain can follow, but 
which any artist will tell you exists. Machine- 
made art is bad because it is crude, not because 
it is determined. Perfect art has perfect 
unity, perfect determination. Do not be mis- 
led b}~ careless use of the term " inspiration." 
If a poem is genuinely inspired, the proof of 
the fact lies in the unvarying use of the one 
right word to express the idea. Nothing is 
more clearly determined than art of the highest 
type and yet if we are to look for freedom from 
the universal rule of law anywhere it would 
surely be in the play of the imagination. 

Dexkek. Riter has well expressed one form 
of a final and conclusive answer to all indeter- 
minist argument. Not only has artistic creation 
its logic, but so has all thought. If a man thinks 
correctly, he thinks logically ; if he thinks logic- 
ally, he thinks in a determined manner. Logic 
and mathematics are the very type of deter- 
minism ; and the sounder thought is, the closer 
it approaches to them. While you have been 
arguing with a zeal worthy of a better cause 
for free will, you have been unconsciously prov- 
ing determinism all along. Each argument 
has come to you as the one best way of answer- 



FATED OR FREE? 57 

ing the argument you have just heard. An 
argument like this runs in as exact a channel 
as any river. And if free will plays no part, 
as it does not, in scientific thinking, how much 
part would it play in the more instinctive and 
habitual mental processes of daily life? 

Freeman. In the first place rigorous logic 
is rather rare ; I have come across very few 
specimens of syllogistic thinking outside of a 
textbook. In the second place one may always 
choose whether to pursue a given line of 
thought or drop it. In the third place, and 
this applies especially to Riter's " artistic ne- 
cessity," there are several equally true ways of 
developing an idea. Finally, incomplete induc- 
tion, the most useful kind of logical thought, 
not only may but must involve choice, and this 
choice may be as free as any other kind of 
choice. For myself, I have made many deliber- 
ate selections of arguments in the course of 
this talk and, for that matter, so have you. 



THE ELEVENTH QUESTION 

Is free will necessary to the police? 

Denker. Apparently " free " logic is just 
like any logic. This is fortunate for you, since 
if undetermined thinking were in any way dif- 
ferent from determined thinking, its validity 
might be open to question. But the lack of 
any apparent difference between the two is 
somewhat awkward in the moral sphere. For 
how can you judge a man's conduct if you don't 
know when he is free and when he isn't ? 

Lawes. Just what I wanted to ask. I am 
glad that Denker brought the matter up. Be- 
fore punishing anybody, if we wanted to deal 
" justly " on free will principles, we would have 
to take him before a committee of expert psy- 
chologists who would determine the extent of 
his " responsibility " after consulting with the 
departments of sociology and eugenics. Even 
then there would be frequent judicial errors in 
dealing with so elusive a factor as free will. It 
would be impossible to run the law in such fash- 
ion and our barbaric attempts (now fortu- 
nately being abandoned by civilized countries) 

58 



FATED OR FREE? 59 

to base punishment on a vindictive basis only 
result in useless suffering. A prison should be 
regarded simply as a hospital for contagious 
moral diseases. When we condemn a man it is 
not necessary for us to pass judgment on his 
character, it is enough that we should lock him 
up as a dangerous moral lunatic who can per- 
haps be improved by a better environment, and 
in any case can be prevented from doing further 
damage. Only on such a basis can we have a 
sane criminal law. 

Freeman. But we do regard lunatics and 
sane people differently. To be logical you 
should hang an insane murderer as readily as 
a sane one, perhaps more readily since a lunatic 
may kill at any time for the sake of killing, 
whereas a sane criminal will perhaps never have 
need or desire to kill more than once. 

La wes. There are two reasons why we treat 
insane criminals as special cases. One is the 
superstition of " responsibility " which is luck- 
ily dying out but must be reckoned with, like 
all superstitions, while it lasts. The other 
reason is a real reason. A sane man can be 
deterred by punishment from committing 
crime, an insane man rarely can. This is true 
responsibility and the one true reason for pun- 
ishment. If punishment will prevent future 
wrong, it should be inflicted ; if not, it is noth- 
ing but wanton cruelty. We should regard 



60 FATED OR FREE? 

punishment only as the pain which a surgeon 
must inflict in an operation. A surgeon does 
not ask whether a man broke his leg from 
carelessness or from sheer accident in deciding 
whether or not he must operate ; he will operate 
in any case if it is necessary, and if not, not. 
So with the death penalty. We do not try to 
determine the exact nature and extent of the 
" guilt " of a snake or a tiger; we do not con- 
demn it for its deeds, which, after all, were only 
the law of its nature; we kill simply and solely 
for safety's sake. Stevenson tells of a little 
devil who said that it would be absurd to punish 
him as it was his nature to do wrong and he 
never could help himself. The judge agreed 
and so had him hung. Now a freewillist judge 
would have decided that in that case the devil 
was " not to blame " (and no more he was) and 
let him go to commit further mischief. So far 
from the police needing the doctrine of free will 
to direct their labors, they wouldn't know what 
to do with it. 

Freeman. I fear I have often disappointed 
you by not taking the positions you thought 
I should have occupied. I have listened with 
great interest to Mr. Lawes, but I have agreed 
with his main contention from the start. No 
human court can determine the exact measure 
of our responsibility for the course of our lives. 
I believe in justice, but I believe also that only 



FATED OR FREE? 61 

God can be really just, for He alone knows all 
of the facts. The aim of the criminal law is to 
protect the rights of each citizen, not to emulate 
the last judgment. 

Lawes. Your common sense, I see, is reas- 
serting itself. But you seem to have gone over 
to us on the legal question, horse, foot and guns. 
If free will is not used to secure the credit of 
the law of what use is it ; where does it make 
any difference? 



THE TWELFTH QUESTION 

What difference does a belief in free will make 
in our daily life? 

Smith. Mr. Lawes is a sensible man and he 
has led us for the first time to the root of the 
matter : what difference would it make to us if 
free will were true? You have told us, Free- 
man, that free will cannot be disproved, and, 
frankly, we don't seem to have done so to your 
satisfaction. You have said that free will may 
be true and presented arguments to show its 
plausibility, although (again frankly) you do 
not seem to have convinced any of us. You 
have said that although free will looks like a 
small thing, it may have important effects. 
But you have not told us what difference its 
being true would make, nor what difference it 
would make to us whether we believed in it or 
not. You have just admitted that freedom is 
an empty question in a court of law. Well, 
where else, then, would it be important? What 
could you do with the notion of freedom in a 
laboratory? What science would find a use for 

the belief? 

62 



FATED OR FREE? 63 

Could you use the notion to advantage in a 
schoolroom? I don't see that you would bring 
up a child any differently from believing the 
doctrine of free will, since, as you pointed out, 
we can't predict the future of any individual in 
any case. Just how would a freewillist's his- 
tory differ from a determinist's? You couldn't 
use it to explain any particular event, since 
there appears, on your admission, to be no 
touch-stone to tell a determined act from a 
chance one. How does one regulate one's do- 
mestic life any differently by this belief? What 
do you do with it at the polls? Does it play 
any part in war, finance, housekeeping, litera- 
ture, art, bootblacking, burglary, medicine, fish- 
ing or what? Have any of us ever done any- 
thing as a result of thinking that what we were 
about to do was or was not determined? A 
freewillist theologian or essayist will talk dif- 
ferently from the rest of us on that one point. 
This is the single difference in anyone's conduct 
which I have ever observed as a result of any 
belief upon the matter. William James, the 
greatest champion free will ever had, used to 
say that there was no difference which did not 
make a difference. If the practical results of 
two beliefs are identical, any distinction between 
them is without genuine reality. Determinism 
is a useful postulate in scientific work. That 
vou admit. But free will seems to have no task 



6* FATED OR FREE? 

to perform as a theory and hence no excuse for 
existence. There are too many drone-theories 
in the world already. In the laboratory I am 
a determinist and so are you. When I am not 
using causality in some way the whole question 
becomes as vague as the old dispute about the 
hen and the egg, and as indifferent either way 
as the dance of the alleged angels on the suppos- 
ititious point of the imaginary darning-needle. 

Freeman. The result of the truth of free- 
dom may be good, bad or indifferent ; it may be 
great or small. That depends upon choice and 
so from its very nature cannot be foretold. 
Even to indicate the role of freedom in the past 
would require more knowledge than anyone pos- 
sesses. But the effects of a sincere belief in 
freedom I can tell you. Briefly, the practical 
advantage of believing in free will, if you con- 
scientiously can, is the development in you of 
the three free will virtues : hope, fear and doubt. 

Smith. I see that you are reluctant to de- 
spair of your case and I trust that your hope 
of winning it is modified by a little wholesome 
fear, but I don't see how you can put in any 
claim to the possession of the third virtue, for 
you are certainly the most dogmatic man I ever 
met. 

Gottlieb. I can see how hope is a virtue 
and I can see how a belief in free will might 
help it. But how can doubt or fear be virtues ? 



FATED OR FREE? 65 

Certainly they are irreconcilable with the vir- 
tue of faith. And charity, the greatest of all 
the virtues, is certainly aided if we believe 
that " to know all is to pardon all." 

Freeman. Perhaps I expressed myself too 
abruptly. I mean intellectual rather than 
moral virtues, though they may have moral ef- 
fects. And my dogmatism (which is mild 
enough compared to that of some of you) is 
limited in certain matters by my belief in free 
will, and so you ought to be thankful that I do 
take that view. But to treat the virtues in or- 
der. When a man is in the grip of an evil habit 
it is of enormous importance that his motto 
be : " It is never too late to mend." If de- 
terminism is true, it is conceivable that a soul 
may be crushed and ruined beyond redemption, 
or, in theological language, damned. But if 
free will be true, there is always a chance, how- 
ever faint. Weak as the will may be, it can 
strive a little — always. If this is done, the 
will is strengthened thereby a little and the next 
step is made easier, so that a soul may climb 
to heaven from the very floor of hell. Many 
a man has felt himself so in the grip of an evil 
heredity and environment that he seemed con- 
demned as to a moral death. No consistent 
freewillist could ever feel that way. Given even 
the faintest desire, or the possibility of arous- 
ing that desire, for righteousness and the most 



66 FATED OR FREE? 

mountainous obstacles may be overcome as con- 
tinents are worn away by water drops. The 
determinist will at the most fight with the cour- 
age of despair and die in the last ditch. But 
the freewillist will fight with the courage of the 
forlorn hope and never " say die " if his creed 
is really part of him. 

Gottlieb. But doesn't " It is never too late 
to mend " lead to carelessness? Only too often 
people will say " I can take a drink or leave 
it," " I can stop when I want to " or " I will 
pull up before I go too far." This confidence 
in their freedom has ruined many who would 
never have persevered in evil had they known 
of the fetters they were forging for themselves. 
Thus the good of rational hope is undone by 
the evil of Micawberish optimism. When Rip 
Van Winkle used to take a drink he would al- 
ways say " I won't count this once," but he was 
none the less a slave of his habit because he re- 
fused to face the fact of his slavery. In such 
cases a belief in free will is positively mis- 
chievous. Besides determinism does not ex- 
clude hope. Good friends, helpful surround- 
ings, wise encouragement will often work won- 
ders. Even when, humanly speaking, a man is 
beyond redemption, the divine will may accom- 
plish what the human will cannot. " With God 
all things are possible." 

Freeman. I admit that this danger of care- 



FATED OR FREE? 67 

lessness does exist. Of course no rational free 
will teaching will excuse it. It surely ought to 
be enough to say to a man : " If you persist in 
such conduct you are laying up for the future a 
store of suffering and struggle, you are binding 
yourself in chains which it will take years to 
break, you are making the road to self-mastery 
dark and toilsome," without adding " All hope 
abandon, ye who enter here." But if anyone 
will run the frightful risks which the freewillist 
admits result from forming habits, he will 
hardly be deterred by the greater threat that 
determinism holds out. But if too many are 
led into danger by over-confidence in their 
power to redeem themselves, even more are 
ruined by over-confidence that they will never 
need redemption. By calling fear a free will 
virtue I mean that no freewillist can ever be an 
absolute optimist. At most he may believe that 
things are going well and getting better, he can 
never deny that they might get worse. We 
never attain absolute security. We must never 
rest on our oars. Eternal vigilance is the price 
not only of freedom but of everything which 
we hold dear. If despair is impossible to the 
freewillist, so is quietism. No man or nation 
can cast all burdens on the Lord, for He has 
given us the precious burdens of our own des- 
tiny for us to carry. 

This reminds me of another point. You said 



68 FATED OR FREE? 

that the determinist was more apt to be char- 
itable than the freewillist. I do not see why 
the freewillist need be uncharitable as regards 
others, since he cannot know what temptations 
may have assailed and been resisted. Charity 
is as much a duty in ignorant man as justice is 
in the wise God. But regarding himself the 
freewillist will not be altogether charitable, for 
we sometimes do feel conscious of having de- 
liberately sinned. Here the determinist will re- 
flect : " The cosmos was transmitting itself 
through my act ; I was but reacting in a neces- 
sary manner to the situation I was in; why 
should I feel ashamed of myself? I had no 
alternative." But the freewillist must say : " I 
was really to blame here, at least in part. I 
cannot lay all the blame on heredity nor on en- 
vironment." 

Smith. People are more inclined to praise 
than to blame themselves. Freewillists tend to 
lay their faults to the account of heredity, en- 
vironment and the rest of it just as other peo- 
ple do. This isn't philosophy, it's human na- 
ture. But determinist s who would like to take 
credit for the good that is in them are debarred 
by their belief. All the credit must go to God 
or to nature. But the freewillist takes credit 
for his excellence and becomes as self-righteous 
as the Pharisee. Not to parents, friends, 



FATED OR FREE? 69 

books, climate, schooling or fatherland do they 
give credit ; it all goes to themselves. Once 
determinism is recognized, " self-made men " 
will no longer be able to brag and blow, for they 
will be taught that no one is or can be " self- 
made." It isn't how much you are responsible 
for what you are that matters ; it is what you 
are. A determinist will feel ashamed of him- 
self if he has done wrong just as he would feel 
ashamed of his clothes if he tumbled into the 
gutter. In either case he will try to clean him- 
self up without regard to any question of " re- 
sponsibility." 

Freeman. Of course the determinist will 
feel unhappy if he has done wrong. In the 
same manner he will feel happy if he has done 
well. As you pointed out, what he will care 
about is not the responsibility but the result. 
There is nothing of which people are more boast- 
ful than their race or family, for which no phi- 
losophy holds anyone responsible. To the 
world no difference is made in modesty or pride 
by either belief. As to one's own feelings, if 
a person, after giving due credit to every aid, 
takes a mite of pride in a good deed or a hard- 
won triumph, no great harm is done and his 
taste of moral success may encourage him to 
further effort. If he takes too much pride in 
his own effort and underrates what has helped 



70 FATED OR FREE? 

him, he does so on his own responsibility, and 
free will is no belief to help anyone dodge re- 
sponsibility. 

Gottlieb. This moral pride, even in mod- 
eration, keeps us from faith. If we can save 
ourselves without God's grace, what need have 
we to trust in Him ? A belief in freedom makes 
the individual a self-sufficient demigod unwill- 
ing to believe in the hidden purpose which di- 
rects our steps through the maze of apparent 
evil. 

Manteller. What's more important, it 
keeps us from attempting any concrete expla- 
nation of human behavior. Free will is not 
only skepticism in religion, as Gottlieb says, 
but also in philosophy and science. 

Freeman. Thank you for reminding me of 
the third free will virtue, doubt. If we believe 
that the future is not wholly the product of the 
past, we must be cautious and conditional in 
all our prophecies. I am as dogmatic as the 
next man about how things are. But where the 
will comes into question my indeterminism 
makes me careful. I know that I can, give no 
final and complete explanation of how things 
came about in our present society, nor how 
they will be to-morrow. I could not talk, as 
so many determinists talk, of the " inevitable " 
triumph of my political ideas. I could not 
condense history into some one theory of race, 



FATED OR FREE? 71 

climate, class-struggle, genius-production or the 
like. Determinists who reckon with all the 
known factors of history may save themselves 
from this fate, but I make it impossible for my- 
self by reckoning in another factor — freedom 
— a factor indeterminate by its very nature. 
I say that determinists can avoid such mon- 
strous simplifications of history, but how rarely 
they do ! Marx, Taine, Buckle, Lombroso, 
Xordau, Nietzsche, Bentham, Owen and so on 
almost without end — the great men who study 
history without some such safeguard as a belief 
in freedom see so clearly the importance of one 
or two factors that they credit omnipotence to 
them. The fate of the Manchester economists 
and the late-lamented " iron law of wages " 
should be a perpetual warning, but it does not 
seem to be so. Whatever encourages a mild 
skepticism in politics, economics, education or 
any of the human sciences is a good thing in 
that respect, at least, for it sets a limit to the 
intolerance and bigotry which have found such 
rich pasturage in these fields. Too simple 
remedies follow in the wake of too simple so- 
lutions. Socialism, laissez-faire, dynamite, clas- 
sical education, the single-tax, Fouriers pha- 
lanx, conscription, extermination of the " lower 
races," universal suffrage, aristocracy, infanti- 
cide, hygiene, marriage reform, various reli- 
gions, — are all proposed by some sincere de- 



72 FATED OR FREE? 

terminists as infallible remedies for whatever 
evils afflict humanity. There is nothing to pre- 
vent a freewillist from believing in any of these 
remedies. But it would not be possible for a 
consistent freewillist to believe that any of 
these proposals or any others would be cures 
for all human ills. They could not cover the 
whole ground, for there is ground that only 
the will can cover by free and unpredictable 
choice. We are content to " follow probabili- 
ties," as Cicero put it, in human affairs. This 
accounts for the connection between the belief 
in free will and in practical freedom. 

Smith. There is such a connection, but it is 
in an inverse ratio. Freewillists have been, not 
by exception but almost by rule, champions of 
class privilege and despotism. Determinists 
have generally been democratic and liberal. 
Paradox or not, this is so. The Roman Cath- 
olic and Greek Orthodox churches are the 
strongest champions of free will in existence to- 
day and at the same time the most consistent 
opponents of political liberty. You may quote 
the Turkish power as an illustration of deter- 
minist despotism. Well, I ask you, which was 
more tolerant, the Moorish rule in Spain or the 
Catholic? In Holland the Arminian party 
was the party of the aristocracy, the Calvinist 
that of the people. In Scotland John Knox, 
in Geneva Calvin, in America Edwards, — these 



FATED OR FREE? 73 

were the champions of equality and civil lib- 
erty. To-day, in every country in Europe, the 
radicals fall into two main classes : religious 
determinists such as the British non-conform- 
ists and rationalistic determinists such as the 
French radical republicans and the Russian 
revolutionists. Compare Holland and Spain, 
Scotland and Russia, Switzerland and Sicily, 
colonial New England and Virginia. But for 
the work of determinists the world would be still 
enslaved. 

Freeman. That you have a very strong his- 
torical case I won't deny. But wherever Cal- 
vinistic churches have been champions of liberty 
they have also been distinguished by simple 
ritual and democratic church government. 
Freewillists in the Unitarian, Congregational, 
Baptist and Methodist Churches have been just 
as ardent champions of liberty as any of the 
believers in predestination. All that these il- 
lustrations from church history prove is that 
established churches tend on the whole to sup- 
port the status quo in the state and that demo- 
cratic church government is often associated 
with a desire for democratic political govern- 
ment. There was a time when the Calvinistic 
Orangemen in Ulster were champions of liberty 
against the Catholic peasantry who supported 
King James. To-day the Catholic peasantry 
are more radical than the Orangemen because 



74 FATED OR FREE? 

they are poorer. The Stuart fox is overseas, 
and, however it may have been once, now deter- 
minists are no more liberal than freewillists. 

Smith. Oh, yes, they are. Take Mill, as 
one instance from thousands. There never was 
a more vigorous champion of philosophical de- 
terminism nor of practical liberty. Was there 
any contradiction there? 

Freeman. None whatever. But neither 
was there any connection, so far as Mill or any- 
one else ever pointed out. There is, however, 
a direct and admitted connection between Rus- 
kin's determinism and his hatred of liberty. It 
was he who asked the famous determinist ques- 
tion: " Who would wish the sun to be free? " 
But he meant it to apply to political liberty. 
Comte's iron-clad Utopia with all of its social 
discipline was a direct corollary of his philoso- 
phy. Marx's intolerance was identified with his 
" materialist conception of history." The rea- 
son for these things is not to be found in any 
pun on the word " freedom " or lame analogy 
between politics and metaphysics, all of which 
I despise as much as you do. It is simply be- 
cause those that regard heredity and environ- 
ment as omnipotent in human affairs are 
tempted to take short cuts to human perfection 
through coercive methods. If you can be cer- 
tain of the good results of a system you will 
tend to enforce it as rigorously as possible. If 



FATED OR FREE? 75 

you believe that salvation, after all, must in 
part be worked out by each individual will, the 
consistent thing to do is to multiply oppor- 
tunities for choice and leave a certain free play 
in all s3 T stems, whether eugenic or euthenic, for 
this purpose. 

Smith. But the old fashioned freewillist be- 
lieved that freedom, while it was undoubtedly a 
fact, was a lamentable one and was an addi- 
tional argument for restraint. Perhaps this 
accounts in part for the connection which has 
been so often noted between indeterminism and 
despotism. To the Catholic theologians (and 
Protestant as well) freedom was a sort of 
snake, harmful until charmed. The freewillist 
Jesuits saw in absolute obedience the one cure 
for the fell disease of " willfulness." 

Freeman. Indeed you are right. But, in 
common with most modern champions of free- 
dom, I differ more from Luther with his hate 
and fear of the doctrine than from Calvin in his 
denial of it. Could you convince me that de- 
terminism was the truth (which you haven't 
done yet) as a person of moderate honesty I 
should have to believe it. But it would be psy- 
chologically impossible for me to w r ant to. 

Benker. Then 3-our thought may be un- 
consciously influenced by } T our wish. 

Freeman. Undoubtedly. But the same 
thing is true and in the same degree of each of 



76 FATED OR FREE? 

you. You have told me, every one of you, that 
not only could you not believe in freedom, but 
you were far from wishing to, — that you de- 
tested the very idea of contingence. Each of 
us is willing to face the truth; there is no con- 
scious self-deceit involved in your case or mine. 
But how far we are unconsciously influenced by 
our wishes none of us can say. 

Lawes. After all you have said, do you 
think that freewillists are any better than any- 
body else? 

Freeman. In all that I have said I said 
nothing like that. Being better comes of using 
freedom, not believing in it. We do not expect 
as much from a belief as you do. Robert Owen 
thought that if humanity would all turn deter- 
minist, little more would be necessary to bring 
the millennium. He had his social laws mapped 
out and that was his remedy for social ills. We 
do not think that a mere conversion to a belief 
in freedom would of itself remake the world. 
All we claim is that indeterminism gives us an 
added reason for hope when all seems hopeless, 
an added reason for vigilance when all seems 
secure and an added reason for caution when 
human life seems a simple thing to explain or 
human beings easily molded by a simple method. 

Gottlieb. One result you have omitted. 
Granting conduct unpredictable even by divine 
foreknowledge, we must also grant that man 



FATED OR FREE? 77 

may defeat the purposes of God, that there is 
no real security, confidence and certain triumph 
of the good. In a word, if free will be true, our 
trust in providence is all a vanity and a lie. 



THE THIRTEENTH QUESTION 

Can God rule if man is free? 

Freeman. No one has the power to defeat 
God's will. 

Gottlieb. But if a man's conduct may be 
in part unforeseeable even by divine wisdom, 
surely some of God's plans as regards this earth 
may be halted or even frustrated. 

Freeman. That is true. We may damn or 
save ourselves, though hardly the entire uni- 
verse. God's plans are so broad that no one 
failure can defeat them. Great wisdom can 
foresee the possible results of various courses 
of action even if it cannot foresee the act itself. 
A chessplayer can be prepared to meet any 
move of his opponent although to every player, 
however wise, the move of the other player is 
sometimes a matter of doubt. 

Smith. When you stole that illustration 
from William James did you fail to note that 
if God is the skilled expert, able to meet all pos- 
sible moves, and free humanity the novice, the 
practical effect of freedom reduces itself to 
zero, since it can effect nothing? 

78 



FATED OR FREE? 79 

Freeman. Not at all. Even an inexpert 
player can prolong a game by careful moving. 
The expert can meet any move, but some moves 
will force him to change his plans. 

Gottlieb. Well, for my part I am satisfied 
to leave the game in God's hands and not play 
against him or try to outwit him. You seem 
really to prefer a chance of going wrong to a 
certainty of going right. To exalt your ego- 
ism you are willing to risk the triumph of right- 
eousness. 

Freeman. You should not carry an image 
too far. We are not playing against God ; we 
are as often as not playing partners. I only 
meant to show that even choice of evil, ruinous 
as it is to ourselves, only affects the course of 
evolution so far as we are concerned. But if 
we prefer risk to certainty, it is because risk 
seems to promise us more than certainty. De- 
terminism often leads to pessimism, and with 
reason. If this is really a block universe with 
a fixed future, the outlook is not particularly 
cheery. Huxley, the great determinist, ad- 
mitted, in fact insisted, that the order of na- 
ture was not a moral order and conflicted rather 
sharply with our ideals. The sun is losing 
heat, our natural resources are being exhausted, 
energy is steadily being degraded according to 
the " second law of thermodynamics," evolution 
will occasionally work backwards as the facts 



80 FATED OR FREE? 

of " dysteleology " and degeneracy show. 
Our triumphs as a race may yet be great ; but if 
they are determined, they are limited. Now 
let us turn the other side of the shield. The 
more the future holds of risk, the more it holds 
of promise. If our fate is in our own hands, 
we may bungle it; but if we do, it will be our 
own fault. You cannot be a pessimist if you 
believe that the future can be changed for the 
better by your own effort. 

Kohlenstoff. If the earth should fall into 
the sun or if the sun should grow cold, free will 
couldn't help us any. 

Freeman. Just let nature refrain from kill- 
ing us off for a few years and then perhaps 
she can't! After all, supposing God has 
granted us freedom, have we done so badly with 
the gift? If free will has had any effect upon 
our past, at least it does not seem to have pre- 
vented the most rapid evolution in cosmic his- 
tory of which we have knowledge. Perhaps, 
like a good general, God has thrown responsi- 
bility on our shoulders as his subordinates and, 
while running a risk in so doing, the choice has 
on the whole proved of advantage not only to 
the soldiers but to the plans of the general. It 
is not that a general is not wiser than his sol- 
diers, it is not that the statesman is not wiser 
than the average citizen, it is not that a father 
is not wiser than his children, that such a thing 



FATED OR FREE? 81 

as free action exists in our world. It is be- 
cause it is for the good of people that they do 
their own choosing and even bungling and so 
learn from the best of teachers, themselves. 
This is the meaning of democracy, of political 
liberty, of free will. God needed our help ; it 
was not enough that we should be his servants, 
he wished us as his allies. Man's free will can- 
not defeat God's plans, for man's free will is 
one of them. 



THE FOURTEENTH QUESTION 

What is the free universe like? 

Gottlieb. Then you do not believe in a 
moral world order? 

Freeman. I believe in a fighting world or- 
der. I see a creative righteousness revealed in 
the main current of evolution. So clear and 
evident is this tendency to progress that I can 
find no other explanation that will fit the facts 
but a powerful moral will active in the universe. 
This I call God. It is the only reason I have 
for believing in any God. Could I find no sin- 
gle ethical purpose in existence, but only an 
endless weaving and unweaving, — a timeless, 
aimless, useless pulsation, — I should cease to 
be a theologian at all, for nothing which I could 
mean by " God " would appear in it. 

Gottlieb. How do you account for evil? 
If God is only a more or less powerful person 
fighting a more or less powerful Devil, there is 
no meaning in things, for the unity of the world 
is broken; God is dethroned from omnipotence 
and reduced to the proportions of a heathen 
deity, one among many ; all faith is blasted for- 
ever, since God may not triumph in the end. 



FATED OR FREE? 83 

To me evil is but the necessary scaffolding 
about the divine purpose. i; All things work 
together to the glory of God * ? to him who has 
faith. But you lack faith. If anything seems 
strange to you, you at once put it down as the 
devil's work. You set up your own petty 
moral standard, itself a product of the tem- 
porary prejudices of your time and place, and 
with it you pretend to measure the infinite and 
absolute Standard beyond all time and place. 
The finite weighs the infinite and calls it want- 
ing ! What blasphemous impudence! Can 
we. in our utter ignorance, judge the Giver of 
justice? By what right can we call in question 
the works of the Creator of ourselves as well as 
of what offends us? Are not our very views 
of right and wrong imperfect, variable, ephem- 
eral? You say "Be charitable to our neigh- 
bor/ 5 and next you have made yourself a judge 
of the mysteries of the universe and tell what 
is right in it and what is wrong. Even our ut- 
terly finite understandings can comprehend that 
much which is commonly called " evil.-* bodily 
pain for instance, is an indispensable good. 
But for the sharpness of the struggle for exist- 
ence with all its cruelty, would human evolution 
have been accomplished? But for sin. would 
there be righteousness : but for suffering as a 
contrast and a background, would there be real 
and vivid happiness? Ask yourself. The road 



84 FATED OR FREE? 

is open to heaven and you sit down and whine 
that the way is rough! 

Freeman. I agree with you that much of 
the waste and cruelty of nature was a necessary 
condition of progress. But that is just why I 
say that God is limited in power. If pain is 
necessary to insure survival and progress 
(which I grant) either God chose it to be so or 
it was in the nature of things that it must be 
so. I think that God does his best with the 
materials which exist just as a sculptor must 
who is given a piece of marble. If there are 
flaws in the marble there are the same 
flaws in the statue, however exquisite the 
workmanship. Given Fact, given matter and 
its habits, which we call laws, the creative 
righteousness had to adopt certain means for 
certain ends, not any means would do for any 
end. There is no question here of a personal 
devil, for evil is simply the frustration of that 
which is good ; without desire there is no evil. 
A personal God is the expression of my belief 
(and yours) that goodness is something and not 
anything, that progress has a real meaning. 
There is no such single counter tendency, 
though there are many individual eddies pro- 
duced by the very rush of the current of crea- 
tive evolution due to the nature of the material 
substance in which the current acts. 

Gottlieb. God, according to you, then, is 



FATED OR FREE? 85 

simply an ethical desire. But he may be more 
than you realize. There is God, the inspirer of 
our ideas of right and wrong, it is true, but 
there is also God the creator, the ruler, the 
judge, the artist and perhaps an infinite number 
of things beside. His plans may be hard to 
understand because they are too big for us to 
grasp. You cannot bind the Absolute by one 
of an infinite number of aspects. No doubt 
our moral views have their place in God's 
scheme, but they cannot measure the whole of it. 

Freeman. God's plans may be greater than 
ours ; but unless they include ours, what is He 
but our enemy? If our ideals are valid, that 
which counters them we must call wicked re- 
gardless of its power. If we can deny the ex- 
istence of evil, we can deny anything. If we ad- 
mit this evil, we can either regard it as an 
imperfection, an obstacle, — necessary, perhaps, 
in the past, but to be destroyed as soon as pos- 
sible, — an obstacle to God's plans as well as 
ours ; or we can regard it as an expression of 
God's will and choose between loyalty to con- 
science and loyalty to God. A God who is lim- 
ited by evil I can understand and work with, a 
God in league with evil is not what I mean by 
the word. 

Gottlieb. God may be the author of 
" evil " and yet wish us to fight it. In fact, evil 
may be here that there may be such a thing as 



86 FATED OR FREE? 

moral triumph. Were there nothing of evil, 
good would not exist, just as if all the world 
were white, we would not know white when we 
saw it. Evil is a cloud which helps us to un- 
derstand the sunshine. 

Freeman. Were all evil of that romantic, 
helpful sort, did all evil result in good, it would 
indeed be ungenerous to -complain. If all the 
strife and suffering of life ended in the renewal 
and heightening of life, as the warriors of Val- 
halla wound and kill each other all day long 
only to be restored to health and strength in 
the evening, then " evil," however painful at 
the time, might be a wise provision of a good 
God. But I cannot believe that the battle of 
Armageddon is only a mock tournament. 
There are evils that result in no good, past, 
present, or to come. There is real failure, 
retrogression, decay. Suffering may elevate 
and improve, it may degrade and destroy. In 
looking at the struggle for existence it is not 
the pain of it that impresses us ; that may be 
borne and joy found in the bearing of it. It 
is the waste, the uselessness of so much of na- 
ture. These things do not give the flavor of 
contrast to happiness; they poison happiness 
at its source. Granting that we have made 
progress on the whole, it has been no triumphal 
procession or mimic warfare, but a charge 



FATED OR FREE? 87 

through the thick of every difficulty, a charge 
always contested and sometimes beaten back. 
It is true that there are blessings in disguise, 
but evils come in disguise, too, — wolves in 
sheeps' clothing. Out of matter God made us 
and lesser things as well. But he needed our 
help to further the work of the future and so he 
gave us a small but growing measure of moral 
freedom. 

Smith. You said that " goodness is some- 
thing and not anything, that progress has a 
real meaning." What is that meaning? What 
can ethical ideas mean as applied to the uni- 
verse as a whole, apart from our own human 
needs and interests? When you call God 
" good " and say that nature includes " evil," 
what do you imply by the words ? 

Freeman. Progress is differentiation. 
When I say that a man is " higher " than an 
ape, an ape than a fish, a fish than a worm, a 
worm than a clod of earth, I mean in each case 
more highly conscious, possessed of a greater 
range of experience, more clearly individual and 
less dependent upon environment, with greater 
capacity to enjoy, to know and to choose. It 
is not that progress is increased complexity. A 
savage is cumbered with superfluous custom, 
ritual and ornament with which the civilized 
man may dispense. Not increased complexity, 



88 FATED OR FREE? 

but increased capacity is the test, increased 
selection, increased personality. It is Liberty 
in the positive sense, the hardest thing in the 
world to define, but not the hardest to under- 
stand. The closest approach to a statement of 
it that I know is the grand old saying : " I am 
come that they might have life and that they 
might have it more abundantly." Good is 
whatever furthers this progress, evil whatever 
hinders. Truth, kindness, just dealing are 
creative things because they help build up the 
most important thing in the universe, human 
character. The best man is he who is most an 
individual, whose character "is most dominated 
by the unifying factor of the moral will. The 
man who bends his character to every turn of 
circumstance by which his selfish immediate in- 
terests may profit lowers his personality, his 
power of choosing because enfeebled, he loses 
the fulness and definiteness of life like a para- 
sitic insect. He acts by the push of circum- 
stances rather than by the pull of will. But 
the good man becomes ever more and more a 
self-chooser. In an infinite, undetermined uni- 
verse there need be no limit to hope, no limit to 
growth. Heaven is not a place, but a process, 
an everlasting process for whoever wills to make 
it so, of heightening the tide of life and mas- 
tering it to subserve our highest wants under 
the direction of an ever more powerful will. 



FATED OR FREE? 89 

Philosophers of the world, awake! You have 
nothing to lose but your chains and you have a 
world, an illimitable because indeterminate 
world, to gain! 



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